A Walled Garden
by Silver-WhiteKyurem
Summary: A short story I wrote for a journal on my college campus. A young woman waits in a garden for someone to notice her. But there is more to her than there appears. Or...less?


**A Walled Garden**

Katie G Albritton

In my garden, weeds replaced the beautiful flowers I planted in the soft, loamy soil long ago. Their twisted and gnarled stalks slither up from the ground, sending out careful little leaves to soak up the few rays of Sun that enter the garden. They twist around and over the overgrown rose bushes, choking the delicate red flowers before they have a chance to bloom into their true beauty. The dead flower heads simply wither and fall to the ground, dry and shriveled. They release a strange odor, something sweet yet disgusting at the same time. Eventually, they disintegrate into the soil and become food for more weeds to kill more roses. It is a never-ending cycle of life, death, life, death.

The weeds climb up the cold gray stone walls of the garden, too, and some are even lucky enough to dip their tips over these walls onto the other side. Outside my garden, they see a world very different from the one inside those oppressive stone walls, chipped and crumbling with age. Outside, the world is sunnier and happy. People bustle about on the streets as they go about their daily business, talking and laughing and enjoying their lives. I often hear their slightly muffled sounds as I sit in my chair, so used to the cold feeling of its rusted steel frame that I no longer feel it.

Of course, the chair is not the only piece of furniture in my garden. There are three other black steel chairs as well, all arranged around a table made of the same unforgiving cold material. There is also a gray stone fountain, sitting directly in the middle of the garden. A stone angel stands at the center and holds up a large vase, from which the water has long since ceased to flow. Now the angel stands guard solemnly over a large basin full of dry twigs and leaves, and the occasional rock or pebble. She has a sad and lonely countenance, even though a small smile graces her slightly parted lips. It is a false smile. I know it well, for I wear one similar to the poor angel's all of the time.

Every day I sit in my chair and wait. I wait for someone from that happy world outside to open the rusting black steel gate and find me sitting here, alone. One would think that this life would be tedious, but I disagree. Sitting in complete stillness and quiet tranquility, I can observe the many small animals that flit and scuttle about the overgrown grounds of the walled garden. Sometimes I see birds, their plumage a dull brown, a mottled gray and white, and when I'm lucky, a soft sky blue. They land at the edge of the fountain and peer into the basin, hoping to find enough water for a drink or a bath. Finding nothing but leaves and twigs, they flit away to find a warmer welcome. I also see squirrels, scurrying along the ground in the fond hopes of finding an acorn dropped by one of the aged Oak trees that grow near the walls of the garden. If they are truly lucky, they will find their prize, then swipe it in their tiny paws and proceed to race away before their precious cargo can be stolen away from them. Sometimes I see little green and brown lizards, clinging to the stone walls or the tough bark of the trees, watching the area around them, looking for an unsuspecting beetle to snap up in their triangular mouths.

However, the animals aside, I am completely and utterly alone. I sit at my table and wait, every day, for something to change. At night, a group of people, always different but led by the same person, wander along the outside of the wall facing the street. They stop a few feet away from the gate, and their leader pushes through them and takes a set of glittering silver keys out of her pocket. She talks to the other people in a soft monotone as she sticks one of the keys into the gate and jiggles it around a bit. Finally, a click alerts her to her success, and she forcefully shoves the gate inward. It's hinges squeal loudly, and the chipped end slides gratingly across the stone pathway leading into my garden. The woman leads her charges inside, and I watch them anxiously, praying that one of them will see me. Several look my way as they observe the garden, but none of them ever show any signs of noticing my presence. They stare right through me into the overgrown rose bushes behind me, or looking up into the branches of a tree overhead.

Then, the woman makes a comment I can never fully understand and leads them to the door of the dilapidated old house that lies behind the garden. I know this ugly old house very well; it is my family's, though I never go inside. Its walls are made of wood and plaster painted a dull brown, with several creamy patches where the paint has worn off. The roof is covered with black tiles, several of which are missing, torn away by heavy storms. The windows are cracked and so foggy with dirt and grime that someone looking inside would be unable to see the dusty furniture in the ornate rooms within. I hate this house. Inside, all of my memories of my past wait for me to be foolish enough to step inside and allow them to flood me with their pain and sadness. I avoid that house as much as I can, and fail to understand why these people willingly go inside every night to allow the sadness to swallow them up. I have never been able to understand why someone would subject themselves to so much bitterness, but it is their choice.

The woman begins to lead her group into the house, and I stand and try to call out to them, to warn them of the horrible sadness that awaits their arrival with open jaws. It waits like a monstrous serpent, poised and ready to strike at the fools who so willingly walk into its lair, some of them even having the audacity to snap pictures with their cameras. I have seen this a million times before; they enter happy and curious, and come out quiet, sad, subdued. None of them have ever heard my pleas for help and freedom, and this time is no different. None of them acknowledge, or even hear, my cries. They follow the woman inside, and she uses a flashlight to show them the way into the foyer of the building. All I can do is stand next to my chair and stare after them, desperately hoping the woman will spot me as she closes the door behind them. She does not, and they vanish from my sight as the heavy wooden door, old and beginning to mold and rot, thunks into place behind the group of curious tourists.

I sigh inwardly and walk along the wall of the house, wrinkling my nose at the odor of rot and decay that rises from the foundations under the home. I know where the group will end up, as much as I loath following them there. The woman, their tour guide, I suppose, always takes them there. It is the most dramatic point from where to tell the grisly tale she is paid to repeat every night. I hear it out of that cursed window, the place where it all happened, every night. Hearing it so much used to make it hurt more and more every night, but now I have heard it so much that I have become immune to the pain. I listen halfheartedly to her tale, astounded by how close her version is to the truth.

I look up from my thoughts and see that I am standing directly under the window. This is where that dreadful event happened; where the pain and suffering ended for some, and intensified for others. Soon, I hear the woman's voice drifting down from the upstairs area of the house, and after a moment I can see her shadow cast on the window panes. I stand and wait, and within a few more moments she has pushed the window open, I assume to make her story all the more dramatic.

She begins the tale, and I lean against the wall of the house and listen to the familiar story. She begins as usual with the tale of the seemingly happy family, the rich mother and father, the three children, the youngest of which was seventeen. She goes on to the secret dark rituals, the abuse, the screams that sometimes echoed from within the once glorious manor house. Then she gets to the kicker. The people stand in a terrified shock as they envision the man and his youngest daughter arguing in that very room. They shudder as they see the father shove his daughter hard at the window, gasp as she stumbles and falls out of the window and into the garden, dead.

The people stand and stare out of the window for several moments in silence before allowing their guide to lead them back down the worn stairs. Soon the wooden door swings open again, and the sad and subdued tourists file out in stunned silence, picturing the mangled body of the young woman lying motionless in the grass of the garden. I watch them sadly, not even attempting to catch their attention anymore. It will not work, it is far too late for these people to ever be able to see me, none the less help me. They think they have learned the dark history of this house, and it is this shaded and dim knowledge that makes it impossible for them to notice someone such as myself.

I watch, unmoving and ambivalent, as they pass through the annoyingly squeaky gate back into their happy little dream world. Within a few minutes they will begin conversing with their families and loved ones, and soon after will forget the story that mortified them only minutes before. This seems to be the way of modern society. Once the present becomes the past, it no longer matters. It is forgotten and blows away in the cool night wind. I suppose that is why no one has bothered to try to help me escape the confines of this garden; I have become the past.

I have been waiting to escape from the walls of my garden for three hundred years.


End file.
